Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Life on the House Plantation

In which a Senator, thick in the ankles, visits and peruses the goings-on, custom and ways of the House of Representatives Plantation.

"My eye first beheld a pack of 5 female Crats yoked in all manner of voluminous paper: resolutions, amendments and bills; carrying them to and fro in methodic fashion. One female Crat, her name "Nancy", of whom the earlier-mentioned Crats were in her charge, barked at them, permitting no dawdle or delay and chastising those whose message departed from the memo issued from her office that day.

"I then took to the gallery area from which vantage I could see the whole of the operation. Standing behind them and over them, I noted the Crats sitting or milling below me and to my left numbered about 250, but no more, and were out-plentied by the "Massas" who congregated to my right. The Massas appeared stern in their mien, capriciously suppressing the Crats by turning away their proposals by manner of a plenary vote, for the Crats were outnumbered and powerless to resist. I too was unable to object to it, since these are the ways of our government and that body, whose membership is elected by the people.

"And then the head massa, a stout man named "Hastert", asserted his hefty will by means of the rapping of a heavy gavel upon his desktop. He announced the commencement of the Two Minute Speeches, of which the horrors are too hideous to recall here.

"I then returned to New York, whereupon I offered my report of what mine eyes had witnessed to the freed Crats gathered there: 'When you look at the way the House of Representatives has been run, it has been run like a plantation and you know what I'm talking about...'"

If you would like to learn more of what life was like for slaves on a pre-Civil War plantation, free from inapt analogy or other mind-bendingly stupid, thought-free and inflamatory rhetoric, I recommend this, which in part inspired the style of this post.